With his hospital break over in a week, Haruto was finally discharged and he went back to his newly rebuilt home which had been finished during his week at the hospital with the help of shinobi workers.
'Waaaa!!! Haruto!!! This looks even better than before!!' Megumin squealed inside his mind as they both looked at the newly constructed house before them.
If before Haruto's home was a simple two story independent house, now it was a decent three story bungalow.
Haruto stood there for a few seconds, outside the house, looking up at the home with a slightly complicated gaze.
'Did you not like it, Haruto?' Megumin asked softly when she saw Haruto unmoving and standing stiff like a statue.
Haruto said nothing for a few seconds and eventually sighed as he thought to himself, 'I didn't want to disturb the house because I wanted to leave behind the memories of the predecessor of this body intact and true… but I guess sometimes you have to go with the flow.'
'No… it's fine… I love it too.' Haruto finally told Megumin through their connection.
Haruto changed into his indoor slippers at the foyer and walked in to examine the newly built house.
The flooring was all wooden and the walls were concrete with bricks. The house was well furnished with new sofas and new paintings, nothing from his old house remained since nothing could be salvaged from the ten explosive tags explosion. But Haruto wasn't interested in any of that.
Haruto's first stop was at a small extension room in a corner of the main hall.
In it, hanging from the wall was a vertical plaque with the words 'Dark God' written on it in bold font.
He'd gotten quite a few strange looks when he'd asked that this room in particular be included in the plans of the new house that was being rebuilt after the explosion, but the contractors had done it anyway without asking too many questions.
This room Haruto had decided would be to honor the Dark God who was watching over him and keeping him safe.
Underneath the plaque was a shelf in which were incense sticks. Haruto pulled out two from the pile and quickly lit them up and arranged them to burn in honor of the Dark God.
"Thank you for saving me from that difficult situation my lord. I promise to do your bidding to the best of my abilities even if it kills me for my life is in your debt."
Megumin watched and said nothing, for she had already learnt from Haruto how he'd magically learnt the shadow clone jutsu during the assassination attempt on him by a certain White Zetsu.
It surprised her a little that Haruto's Dark God actually existed, but then she thought back to the Old Man who had sent her into Haruto's mind as punishment for Aqua abusing the resurrection skill and became quiet.
Perhaps Haruto truly was special as he said and he'd been sent into this world for a greater purpose.
With the prayer submitted, Haruto quietly left the small shrine in his hall and continued exploring the second and the third floors.
The second floor had two bedrooms for sleeping and a small kitchen along with a couple of bathrooms.
The bathrooms were peculiar in that they had windows large enough to let people get in or out of them without any grills barring entry or exit. Haruto had included them so that in case of being ambushed in his home again he would have a way of escape without having to run into the enemy by going through the front door.
When Haruto finally went up to the third floor he was met with a large empty hall filled with empty shelves.
This was the floor Haruto had decided would be his research and training floor. One day in the distant future, the empty shelves would be filled with jutsu scrolls and secret techniques that he would have invented himself.
On a table in the room were a set of books conveniently donated by the village at his request, they were the basic academy textbooks that contained all knowledge taught to the students in the shinobi academy.
Haruto had requested them since his previous books had all burnt away in the explosion.
Feeling the cool air breeze in through the windows in the room, and since it wasn't late enough to eat yet, Haruto picked up the basic chakra textbook and settled down to learn more.
'I know how to perform the shadow clone jutsu and I have high level experience in how to make them thanks to the Dark Lord…'
'But given my lack of or poor chakra control, it took me two thirds of my chakra to produce a clone that had half my chakra…and if I hadn't been using the basic Chakra circulation method earlier that day it would've taken even longer to create.'
'Completely inefficient and impractical… even though I pulled it off that day, it's not something I would've been able to pull off a second time had I failed the first time.'
'I should start with chakra control exercises to become efficient in that first… and once I'm decent at Chakra control I should be able to easily pick up the other three basic academy jutsu since I already know the Shadow Clone Jutsu… no need to spend six years like other kids do in the academy.'
With that Haruto opened the index and searched for the chapter related to Chakra Control, he found it and opened the chapter.
'Chakra control is the basis of all jutsus.'
'With good chakra control one gains benefits in three areas, the speed of executing the jutsu improves, the amount of chakra it takes to execute the jutsu decreases, and the caster gains more control over the jutsu itself to mold it to their liking.'
'There are three basic Chakra control exercises that every shinobi must complete to have an excellent grasp over chakra control. They are the leaf concentration exercise, the surface walking exercise and the mixture separation exercise.'
Haruto paused at the mixture separation exercise, he'd heard about the leaf concentration and the surface walking exercises before from the show, but what about the Mixture separation exercise?
Haruto skipped the explanation of the two other exercises and stepped straight into the last one.
'The mixture separation exercise is an exercise where you use your chakra to separate a mixture of two nearly equally dense materials in a container, for example sand from gravel, or a harder variant salt and sugar. An even harder variant of this exercise requires you to separate milk, water and sugar from each other.'
Haruto sat there dumbfounded.
'You can do that?'
'How does one even do that?'
Haruto read on.
'To do so, you first diffuse your chakra into the mixture and then by sensing the various densities of materials that your chakra sticks to, you separate them into different containers.'
'So simple? Seriously? It sounds so easy… is it really this easy?'
Haruto quickly went to the ground floor and gathered a fistfull of normal sand filled with gravel from outside.
He returned to the third floor and placed it on the table in front of him before closing his eyes to focus.
He kneaded a little bit of chakra within his stomach's tenketsu and began to gather some of it inside his hands. The process took some time, about half a minute or so before he was able to gather enough chakra into his palms since he wasn't currently using the basic Chakra Circulation method.
Then Haruto carefully emitted that chakra out of the tenketsu in his palms to cover the sand and gravel before him.
Only, almost as soon as the chakra escaped his hands, it diffused into the air like perfume.
Haruto fought tooth and nail to keep the chakra in his control, but failed miserably before the chakra was simply carried away by the air currents all around the room.
However something else that was rather miraculous happened and Haruto was shocked.